The Missing Gold of Althouse Creek | Oregon’s Lost Cabin Mine Part XI

Part XI: The Missing Gold of Althouse Creek

The Legend of Oregon’s Lost Cabin Mine

By the time miners had worked their way through much of Althouse Creek, they knew they were dealing with extraordinary country.

Gold had been recovered throughout the district. Coarse placer deposits had drawn miners into the Illinois Valley, and the hills surrounding Althouse were eventually pierced by so many prospects and excavations that the country became associated with the memorable description “Mountain of a Thousand Holes.” (Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries.)

Yet the more thoroughly miners explored the district, the more one question refused to disappear.

Where had all the gold come from?

And perhaps more importantly, was all of it still there?

Historical accounts concerning Althouse Creek preserve a long-running belief that part of the expected placer wealth was somehow missing. Rich ground existed through the drainage, but miners believed a stretch of approximately two miles did not contain the amount of gold that the surrounding deposits led them to expect. (Mackey, “The Lost Lead.”)

That apparent gap became part of a much larger search.

For this investigation into Oregon’s Lost Cabin Mine, it also raises a possibility that deserves careful consideration.

Not because the missing gold proves where the Lost Cabin stood.

It does not.

But because by this point in the historical record, two mysteries have arrived in remarkably similar country.

One concerns men who reportedly left Oregon with an extraordinary amount of gold and could not relocate their workings.

The other concerns miners wondering why part of an extraordinarily rich creek appeared to contain less gold than expected.

Those are different stories.

For now, they should remain different stories.

But they are getting difficult to examine without occasionally looking across the page at one another.

The Search Moved Into the Hills

The miners of Althouse had an obvious explanation for the rich placer gold beneath their feet.

Somewhere there had to be a source.

Placer gold reaches a creek after erosion carries it away from the rock or older deposits in which it originated. Once miners had worked the readily accessible stream gravels, searching the surrounding hills for the source was a logical progression.

That search became extensive.

Decaying wooden timbers covered by moss and forest debris near old Althouse Creek mining workings. — Scattered timbers slowly disappearing into the forest near historic Althouse Creek workings. They may be remnants of a sluice, water chute, or another mining structure, although their original use has not been confirmed.

Prospectors dug shafts, tunnels, trenches and test pits throughout the surrounding country. Mining eventually extended far beyond the active creek channel as men pursued old gravels, hillside deposits and possible continuations of productive ground. Historical mining reports document the remarkable extent of later work throughout the Althouse district. (Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries.)

William Mackey preserved part of that search in his writing “The Lost Lead.”

Mackey’s account is particularly valuable because the search was not merely a story he heard from distant miners. His own father devoted considerable effort to looking for the lost lead. Mackey describes a belief that something important about the distribution of Althouse gold remained unexplained. (Mackey, “The Lost Lead.”)

The obvious answer was somewhere in the hills.

Perhaps it still is.

But another possibility deserves to remain on the table.

What If the Creek Had Already Been Worked?

The following is the author’s interpretation, not a conclusion stated by Mackey or by the historical mining reports.

If a small party reached Althouse Creek before the district’s generally recognized discovery, they would not necessarily have left behind anything resembling the later mines that transformed the landscape.

They would have needed remarkably little.

A pan.

Simple tools.

Water.

And access to rich, shallow placer ground.

The easiest gold would naturally have been taken first. Exposed bedrock, cracks, pockets, bars and shallow gravels could be worked without tunnels, hydraulic equipment or permanent infrastructure.

If the ground was exceptionally rich, a small group could have removed a considerable amount while disturbing only a limited portion of the creek.

Then they could have left.

Perhaps intending to return.

That possibility becomes particularly interesting when the missing section of Althouse Creek is considered not as a place where gold never existed, but as a place where some of the easiest gold may already have been removed.

There is presently no historical evidence proving that happened.

But it would produce an unusual result.

Later miners could encounter rich placer deposits above a section of creek.

They could encounter rich deposits below it.

Between them they might find ground that appeared unexpectedly poor.

Without knowledge of earlier mining, the most reasonable explanation would be geological.

The gold must have gone somewhere else.

And so they would look for it.

What the Creek Could Erase

There is another reason an earlier placer operation might have been difficult for later miners to recognize.

Althouse Creek changes dramatically with the seasons.

During quieter summer periods, sections of the drainage can become relatively modest. Winter conditions can bring substantially greater water, capable of moving gravel, changing banks and rearranging material within the active channel.

The author does not suggest that winter water could erase every form of mining.

Large tunnels, substantial ditches and major excavations can survive for generations.

But the earliest placer miners would not necessarily have created those features.

A small group working shallow gravel and exposed bedrock could leave comparatively subtle evidence.

After seasonal high water, some of that evidence could become obscured beneath newly moved gravel and sediment.

Then came the larger mining rush.

Whatever traces remained would have entered a landscape being rapidly altered by miners who had no reason to distinguish an earlier disturbance from their own.

Later mining changed Althouse even more dramatically. Ditches, tunnels, hydraulic operations and repeated reworking altered portions of the drainage over decades. Oregon’s historical mining records document how extensively the district continued to be worked after its initial discovery. (Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries.)

The Althouse Creek remembered by later generations was therefore not the same landscape encountered by its earliest miners.

It had been rewritten repeatedly.

The Cabin Problem

This possibility also offers a practical way to reconsider one of the central problems in the Lost Cabin story.

If an earlier party had worked Althouse Creek, why did nobody simply find their cabin?

Perhaps somebody did.

A shallow placer operation beside an active creek might become difficult to recognize after high water and later mining.

A cabin built above the immediate channel could survive much longer.

Later miners encountering such a structure would not automatically know who built it. If it remained useful, there would be every reason to occupy it, repair it, alter it or build beside it.

Within a generation, its original history could disappear while the structure itself remained.

The cabin would no longer be regarded as evidence of an unknown earlier mining party.

It would simply be an old cabin in a mining district full of miners.

This distinction may help explain something that has troubled Lost Cabin searches for generations.

A legendary site does not necessarily remain lost because nobody ever physically encounters it.

Sometimes the location remains known while its identity becomes lost.

Two Histories Approaching the Same Country

By Part XI, the historical accounts examined in this series have traveled a considerable distance.

Set ’Em Up’s story preserved an early account of extraordinary Oregon gold and unsuccessful attempts to return.

Hall and Thompson preserved another tradition involving miners, cabins, tools and directions intended to lead back to rich ground.

The Grizzly Bear Mine account added another version of a remarkable discovery that could not later be relocated.

Those stories developed separately and contain differences that should not be ignored.

Now Althouse Creek adds something different.

It gives us a documented mining landscape in which miners themselves believed part of the gold story remained unresolved.

That does not make Althouse Creek the Lost Cabin Mine.

It does something more useful.

It gives the legend a landscape in which some of its practical details begin to make sense.

There were exceptionally rich placers.

There were working camps.

There were cabins.

There were miners searching the surrounding hills for gold they believed should exist.

And there was a persistent question about gold that seemed to be missing.

The Author’s Interpretation

The historical record establishes that Althouse Creek became one of Southern Oregon’s important placer districts and that miners extensively searched the surrounding country for additional sources of gold. Mackey’s writing preserves the search for the lost lead and his father’s involvement in it. (Mackey, “The Lost Lead”; Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries.)

The historical record does not establish that an unknown party mined the reported two-mile stretch before the recognized rush.

It does not establish that the Lost Cabin stood there.

And it does not prove that the missing placer gold and the Lost Cabin tradition describe the same event.

Those are distinctions worth preserving.

The author’s interpretation is simply that an earlier mining episode provides one practical explanation worth considering.

If miners reached part of Althouse Creek before the larger rush, removed the easiest gold, established a temporary working camp and departed expecting to return, the events that followed could produce much of what later history remembers.

Seasonal water could obscure shallow workings.

Later miners could overwhelm whatever evidence remained.

An old cabin could be reused until its original identity disappeared.

And miners encountering unexpectedly poor ground between richer deposits might search the hills for gold that was no longer entirely there.

The lost lead and the Lost Cabin would not have to be the same thing.

They might simply be two consequences of the same forgotten beginning.

That possibility does not solve the mystery.

But after following the surviving accounts from one story to another, it brings the investigation to an important point.

For the first time, the old legends and the documented mining landscape are no longer merely similar.

They are beginning to occupy the same historical ground.

Part XII continues from here by placing that geography and chronology together, without requiring any change to the direction already established for the series.

References

Mackey, William. “The Lost Lead.” Historical writing concerning Althouse Creek and the search for the lost lead.

Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. Historical mining reports, maps and archival records concerning Josephine County, the Illinois Valley and the Althouse Mining District.

Oregon Bureau of Mines and Geology. Mineral Resources of Oregon. Historical accounts of Southern Oregon placer mining and the Althouse district.

Oregon Historical Society. Historical materials concerning the Southern Oregon gold rush, Illinois Valley mining and Althouse Creek.